


Lies

by Sarahastro



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-12
Updated: 2014-03-12
Packaged: 2018-01-15 12:46:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1305367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarahastro/pseuds/Sarahastro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“His desire to lead the MCU was implanted. He’ll think it was his idea,” Hill says. “We also gave the two of you a history. He will trust you completely.”</p><p>“Agent Coulson and I have never met,” May says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lies

**Author's Note:**

> After watching the most recent episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., kitlee625 and I were completely blown away by the revelation at the end with May. We came up with two possible scenarios to explain this. This is one of them.
> 
> Thanks to kitlee625 for her help with this story.

“Agent May.”

May looks up and is surprised to see Agent Hill and Director Fury standing over her desk.

“Take a walk with us.” It is not a request.

May nods and follows them out of the block of cubicles. They lead her to a door she has never noticed. Inside the walls are coated with a black material that she knows to be both soundproof and disruptive to surveillance devices.

“We have an assignment for you,” Hill says. She hands May a file marked Level 9.

May hesitates a moment before opening the file and gives Fury a questioning look. He nods. She opens it. Inside is the personnel file and photograph of a Level 8 agent.

“Agent Phillip Coulson,” she says as she skims the file. “It says here that he was killed in action before the Battle of New York.”

“What we’re about to tell you is classified,” Hill says. “Only a handful of people know about this, and you can never discuss it with anyone other than myself or Director Fury.”

May nods.

“Agent Coulson died,” Hill says, “but he has been revived.”

“Revived?” She looks at them, and Fury nods. “That’s impossible.”

“And yet it happened,” Fury says. “The details are in that file. Our scientists are putting the finishing touches on the process as we speak, but before they do, we need to discuss your assignment.”

“What does this have to do with me?”

“The process has been very traumatic,” Fury says. “We’ve done our best to bring him back the way he was, but the truth is that we need someone to watch him. Agent Coulson would never be satisfied sitting behind a desk at headquarters, so we have arranged things so that he will take a field assignment leading a mobile command unit. I believe you’re familiar with them.”

“I was assigned to one for a few months in the mid-90’s,” May says.

“We’re bringing them back,” Fury says, “starting with a prototype that Agent Coulson will lead. We want you to be the pilot.”

“I’ve retired from field duty,” she says. “There are plenty of other qualified pilots.”

“There are, but you have special skills that make you uniquely qualified for this assignment. You’re one of our most skilled specialists, and your abilities in hand-to-hand combat are unmatched.”

“I thought you just wanted me to drive the bus.”

“We also want you to watch Agent Coulson.”

May gives him a look. “You think he’s a threat?”

“We’re not sure of anything when it comes to Agent Coulson,” Hill says. “That’s why we need you to watch him.”

“So my job will be to fly the plane and neutralize him if necessary.”

“Hopefully it won’t come to that,” Fury says. “We have safeguards in place to help keep Coulson under control.” He nods towards the file, and May opens it and flips through it until she finds a page labeled “neural reprogramming.”

“Neural reprogramming?”

“His desire to lead the MCU was implanted. He’ll think it was his idea,” Hill says. “We also gave the two of you a history. He will trust you completely.”

“Agent Coulson and I have never met,” May says.

“Actually, you two have met. He was the field agent in charge in Bahrain.”

May blinks hard. She tries not to think about Bahrain, but she dredges up the memories until she recalls arguing with a nondescript man in a suit. She studies the picture and realizes that it was him. “That’s why you chose me.”

“Rewriting memories is not easy. The fact that you two have worked together in the past makes you an ideal candidate.”

May wonders why they do not ask someone who actually was his friend, then thinks that a real friend would probably not do what they are asking her to do. She has no personal loyalty to the man, and she can barely stomach the thought. “What if I refuse to go along with this?” she asks. “Lying to a Level 8 agent, pretending to be his friend so that I can spy on him, possibly kill him… This isn’t what I do anymore. I’ve retired.”

“You’ll do it as a personal favor to me,” Fury says. “There are things that I’ve kept secret for you. I allowed you to retire to desk duty after Bahrain. Now you are going to do this for me.”

“That file details the shared backstory we came up with for you two,” Hill says. “Familiarize yourself with it, and be ready to report for duty. Agent Coulson will come get you himself. You need to make him believe that this is his idea. Let him convince you to come back into the field.” Hill hands her a small satellite phone. “This is encrypted. It will reach Director Fury at any time. Do not hesitate to contact him if anything develops with Agent Coulson.”

*****

May has always hated undercover work, but her training kicks in and she throws herself into the assignment. She immerses herself in her backstory, reading over the details until she can recite them in her sleep. She learns his hometown and his parents’ names, and how he was recruited into S.H.I.E.L.D. She learns that he is a fan of Captain America and collected a set of vintage trading cards (she rolls her eyes at that). The file is so detailed that when he finally comes down to recruit her, she feels like she already knows him.

But lying to him on the bus turns out to be both easier and harder than she had imagined. The reprogramming is so thorough that he never doubts their history. From the first day, he acts like they are old friends. The other team members give her a wide berth, but Coulson comes by the cockpit often and chats away while she flies in silence. At first his presence annoys her, but gradually she realizes that she has become used to it, even misses him when he is gone. It is as if pretending to be his friend automatically makes them friends. Sometimes he looks at her with so much trust, it breaks her heart, but she just pushes those feelings aside and reminds herself that she is just doing her job.

Although the programming makes it easy to convince him that they are old friends, whenever they meet people who actually knew him, she worries that they are not fooled. Amadour immediately notices that Coulson is different, and when May feigns ignorance she can tell that Amadour is suspicious. That night she tells Fury and recommends that he keep Coulson away from Amadour, then spends hours pouring over Coulson’s file, trying to figure out what Amadour had seen.

Whenever she gets in touch with Fury or Hill, she can tell that they are both concerned with her reports on Coulson’s behavior. Even she knows that this emotional, sentimental man does not match the controlled, calculating agent he was before he died. She remembers him a little better from Bahrain now. She remembers how cold and calm he had sounded when he told her that she had to let it go. She had nearly punched him in the face. He was not the one S.H.I.E.L.D. pointed like a weapon at their enemies. He was not the one with blood on his hands. He was just a man in a suit, giving the orders while people like her did the dirty work. Now he is soft and compassionate, quick to anger but also quick to forgive.

They are even more concerned when he goes against orders to rescue Fitz and Ward from their mission out of the Hub. Fury had arranged the whole incident as a test of Coulson’s loyalty, and he failed. Now they tell her to keep an even closer eye on him and to monitor his communications with the other team members, especially Skye.

The strain of her mission starts to get to her. She has been keeping herself apart from the others, but it is too hard to handle the pressure without someone to turn to. Sometimes she wishes she and Coulson really were old friends, that she could confide in him. She finds herself drawn to Ward, the only other specialist on the bus, the closest thing to a peer she has. At first they just drink together, but gradually they begin talking and sparring and having sex. She knows it is a bad idea, but she rationalizes it as the one thing keeping her sane, the one part of this life that feels real.

*****

In the end, her mission fails. Coulson is captured by Centipede, and Fury has to unleash all of S.H.I.E.L.D. resources to get him back. Officially he puts Hand in charge of the bus, but unofficially he tells May to do whatever it takes to get Coulson back. So while Hand is performing her by-the-book investigation, May makes sure that Skye is able to investigate on her own. The girl is completely devoted to Coulson, and although she does not completely trust her, she knows that she can count on Skye to help him.

She is not sure exactly what happened with Raina and Poe, but when they finally get Coulson back, he has unraveled even further. He pushes until Fury finally sends him the file about his recovery, and he spends days pouring over it. At least one part of his reprogramming has stuck, though - he shows May the file almost immediately. She takes it with trepidation, not looking forward to having a whole new pile of lies to learn. Some of it is the truth, but with enough lies piled around them to keep Coulson in the dark. Fury tells her that it is her responsibility to get him to back off, so when they are asked to drop FitzSimmons off at the Academy for a consult, she decides to take Coulson on a side mission to look into Skye’s origins. She hopes that the trip will distract him and give her a chance to get a read on his current state.

He broods through most of the trip to Mexico, but eventually he opens up. The situation is worse than she had feared. He is doubting everything now, not just his resurrection but S.H.I.E.L.D. itself. And yet he barely hesitates when she asks him, “Do you trust me at least?’

“Yes.”

Still, she is aware that the connection between them is completely artificial, just false memories designed to make him trust her. Some of those implanted memories are already starting to fail. So when he tells her that he is tired of secrets, she decides to let one go, sacrifice one small secret in order to build something real.

“Agent Ward and I have been having sex.”

Unfortunately, that is when Agent Lumley finally arrives, and it is several hours before she can hear his response. By that time, she is nervous about what he will say. She wonders if this will torpedo their fragile friendship and send all of the lies crashing down. But he just shrugs and smiles and says, “I trust you know what you’re doing.”

He still trusts her. Once he leaves, she stares down at her glass of whiskey and wonders if that is good or bad. A few months ago when she had agreed to go back into the field, she had convinced herself that she truly was watching his back, that all of these lies were for his own good. But now she is not so sure.

*****

Finding out the truth about Skye refocuses both of them. They redouble their efforts to find the Clairvoyant. May brushes off Ward’s concerns, but she knows he is right. Coulson and Skye are taking this too personally. She tells herself that the best way she can help them is to do what she has been doing - monitor Coulson, try to stay one step ahead of him, and keep watching his back.

But none of that is enough, and Skye is shot. She does not expect Coulson to play right into the Clairvoyant’s hands by seeking out his own treatment, but she goes along with it. Her job is to watch and protect, not to interfere. She tries to get him to stay on the bus and let her go into the Guest House, but he refuses.

“You have to stay on the plane with Skye and Simmons,” he says. “I need you to look after them.”

When he finally returns, she can tell by the haunted look on his face that he has seen something he was not supposed to. She tries to get him to tell her what he saw, but for the first time he pulls back and refuses to open up to her. She wonders if his reprogramming has finally cracked, but enough of the lies are still in place that she is finally able to convince him to talk to Skye. When she hears what he told her, thanks to the monitoring devices planted throughout the bus, her heart sinks. He knows the truth, and she can tell that he is even more determined than ever to uncover everything.

She does not hesitate. Over the past few months she has grown fond of Coulson, even thinks that they could be friends. But she is a soldier, and these are her orders. If she feels a pang of guilt, she pushes it away with the thought that this is for his own good. The man is clearly unraveling, unable to handle the truth. If he keeps falling down this rabbit hole, he will just take the rest of them down with him.

She makes the call. “Agent Melinda May. Update, log 93. He knows. I repeat: Coulson knows.”


End file.
